LETTERS: The chubby factor as a measure of obesity

PUB. DATE

November 2003

SOURCE

GP: General Practitioner;11/17/2003, p43

SOURCE TYPE

Periodical

DOC. TYPE

Letter

ABSTRACT

The author who is a general practitioner has taken a three-month sabbatical from his practice, to look at child and adolescent obesity. The author is currently investigating the validity of a simple, or higher power ratio of face measurements cheek-to-cheek and chin-to-crown as a correlate of BMI or other measures of obesity. If valid, he intends to use this ratio to look at historical patterns of obesity using old, in some cases very old, school photographs from which the information can be retrieved easily, using a calibrated magnifying overlay. These data can then be used to relate to other sources of socio-economic data, or even to the numbers of researchers known to be working on the problem of childhood and adolescent obesity.